


A Stone in Your Pocket

by EmiAliceinWonderland



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blue Lily Lily Blue Spoilers, Boys In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Romance, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9661925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmiAliceinWonderland/pseuds/EmiAliceinWonderland
Summary: Adam doesn't speak about Persephone for months after her death.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bblamentation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bblamentation/gifts).



> This is for Maikay for a great prompt she gave me a few days ago! Hope it's sweet enough to cancel out some of the angst ^^;;

It's a Sunday afternoon at the Barns and everything is perfect. The sun is shining through the glass french doors in the living room, but outside it is frosty and cold, making the log fire burning and crackling in the corner all the more welcoming. It's completely quiet, but not in a bad way. The farm is not sleeping anymore; it's full of life, but gentle, peaceful life that makes Adam feel content and fulfilled down to his bones.

The Barns feel like Ronan now.  

Adam's shoulder is pressed against Ronan's, a warm connection spreading through them from the touch of their arms and their knees where they have their long legs crossed, sitting on the floor with their backs to the sofa. In front of them is a pack of Tarot cards. The cards Persephone gave Adam. He doesn't use them as often as he perhaps should. For the first few months after she had died he hadn't even touched them, had stuffed them at the back of his desk, and tried to keep down the bile rising in his throat when he allowed his brain to register that she was really  _ gone.  _

He's a little better now, after everything's that's happened, after some time, after having Ronan by his side. 

(Well, Ronan's been by his side for years now, but it's only recently that they've acknowledged the strange  _ more-than-friendship  _ feeling between them, and god, does it feel good to have someone who is so intimately intertwined in his life now.) 

"So, how do I do it again?" Ronan speaks up whilst Adam is lost in his thoughts. The other boy is leaning forward over the tarot deck and shuffling through the cards. He seems to be picking out cards that he likes the look of, one with a raven on it, one with a skull, another with an elaborate pattern. 

Adam lets out a chuckle and nudges into his boyfriend with his shoulder, "You can't just pick the ones you want, you idiot," he says affectionately, and laughs again when Ronan rolls his eyes and drops the cards he'd chosen with a huff. 

"What's the point if you can't choose?" he asks, pretending to be grumpy, but Adam knows him too well now, and he can hear the real sense of interest underneath his tone. 

"The cards choose you...I -- well, that's what Persephone always said. You pick the cards, but you have to do it with them facing downwards. Pick out the ones that you feel  _ drawn _ to. Like this." 

Adam reaches out to place his palm on top of Ronan's hand and hooks his fingertips in between Ronan's knuckles before gently guiding their joined hands over the deck of cards. "Spread a few out," he whispers, already entranced in the atmosphere that he doesn't know if Ronan can feel too, but it's similiar to when he's scrying, playing with tarot cards isn't a game for him, he feels the meaning and magic of them down to his core. 

Ronan quietly obliges and spreads the deck out on the floor in front of them with his free hand. Adam nods and then moves their joined hands over the spread out pile, "Now see which ones you're drawn to, see if you can feel an energy coming off any of them, a sort-of warmth?" he tries to explain the best he can as he starts slowly moving his and Ronan's palms back and forth across the air above the cards. He feels Ronan's fingers twitch a little under his after a minute and rubs his thumb against the back of the other boy's hand reassuringly. "This one?" he asks, looking across at Ronan and then back to the face down card their hands have stopped above. 

"Yeah," Ronan whispers, and that's when Adam knows that he has been caught by the magic too. 

"Okay, well, turn it over, it's chosen you," Adam says with a small smile, glad that Ronan is so taken by the things that Adam loves. He lets his hand untwine itself from Ronan's and leans back against the sofa again, but slightly to the side too so he can rest his chin on Ronan's shoulder whilst he reads the card. 

"The lovers..." Ronan says as he turns over the card he had chosen. He turns wide-eyed to Adam. "I swear I didn't...god, that's embarrassing," he grumbles, a blush rising up his neck and to his cheeks, but Adam knows he's a romantic at heart, and it wasn't like they'd deliberately chosen the lovers card. 

"It doesn't always mean romance, though, you know," Adam says, nuzzling his cheek for a second against Ronan's shoulder to hide his growing grin before peering over to look properly at the card. In this particular deck it is a beautiful drawing of two men, one dark skinned, one light, arms around each other, heads bowed and flowers creeping around their heads and waists.

"What does it mean then?" Ronan asks, turning his head to look at Adam, although the position is awkward and he ends up with his nose in Adam's hair. Neither of them really mind though. 

"Well, because you were drawn to it, and we're not doing a specific combination or tree today, it most likely means that there's a new relationship in your life, or the re-bonding of an old one. Again, not necessarily romantic, but..." 

"But it's pretty damn obvious it's about us?"

Adam laughs, covering his face with his hands for a second, "Yeah." 

Ronan laughs too and puts the card down to reach out for Adam, "You're both," he says quietly as he brings Adam into a hug, something Ronan is extremely fond of doing but will only do when they're alone. 

"Both what?" Adam asks, tightening his own arms around Ronan's back to hug him in return. 

"You're a new relationship...romantically, and also a re-bonding of an old one. I've known you for a while, you're one of my best friends but...we've kind of re-bonded, in a way, I guess...you're still my best friend, but you're even more now too..." Ronan trails off with a shrug, always a little tongue tied when it comes to talking about this kind of thing. 

Adam just smiles and nods. He understands. 

When they pull away from each other to look back at the deck of cards Adam feels a pang of grief flood through him as a memory flashes into his head. It is of him and Persephone on the floor of her strange, whimsical bedroom in Fox Way, Persephone telling Adam the meanings of the cards he had chosen the way he was doing right now. Would she be proud of him for teaching Ronan? She had never really said too much about Lynch, but with her perception and uncanny way of knowing everything that was going on around her, he wouldn't have been surprised if she'd known they were in love with each other before either of them did. 

"I miss her," Adam suddenly blurts out, because he's got so much better at speaking his feelings out loud now that he's surrounded by people that love him, and truly away and out of the trailer park and his parents. He is slowly unlearning the way his mother had silenced him, scolded him for crying, told him to keep his emotions inside. He is quietly becoming braver and stronger and more able to talk about his feelings, after years of his father telling him that to do so was pathetic. 

Ronan looks over at him, biting his lower lip between his teeth. Adam stares at it for a moment. Their eyes meet. "Persephone?" Ronan asks, even though they both know he doesn't need to clarify. 

Adam gives a small nod, and picks at the cuff of his shirt. 

"How do you --  how did you deal with the fact that...that they're never coming back?" he asks. It is a question he would not have dared ask Ronan Lynch a year ago, or maybe even a few months ago, but they know each other better now, and he knows when Ronan is in the wrong or right mood to talk about these things. He knows when to be quiet with him, and he knows when they can talk. And vice versa, Ronan has learnt the same about Adam. 

If there's one thing Ronan is well versed in, it is grief, and so it seems apt that he is really the first and only person Adam has spoken about Persephone with. He's not sure the others really know how much her death affected him. Maybe Blue does, but he can't cry to her about it, when she probably feels the loss of their friend even more deeply than he does.

Ronan seems instinctively to know not to question why Adam is bringing this up months later, weeks after any of them have mentioned Persephone, days and days and days after Adam has seemed outwardly upset about her passing. 

"You don't," Ronan says bluntly, picking up the lovers card he had chosen, and turning it over in his hands, a nervous habit to always be fiddling with something between his fingers, be it his leather bands, or more recently Adam's own hands between his own. 

Adam cocks his head to the side in question. He reaches out and gently takes the card from Ronan so he doesn't absentmindedly damage it, and places his own hands into Ronan's instead. Sure enough, the other boy begins fiddling with Adam's fingers as he talks. 

"I don't think I'll ever be able to truly... _ accept  _ the fact that my dad's gone, that he's never coming back, that I'll never get to hear his voice again. It's -- how do you accept something like that? How do you deal with the fact that someone you love doesn't  _ exist   _ anymore? You don't, Adam. I don't think you  _ can.  _ But you can cope. You can...learn to live without them. My, um, someone at my church, you know...the Catholic do-gooder types who want to help all the angsty teens they see?" he lets out a small embarrassed and slightly bitter laugh. Adam nods, and squeezes his hands to encourage him to keep going. This is good for both of them. 

"A guy there, after church, he'd heard about my dad and he...I guess he saw I wasn't doing so well, and he came up to me and I swore at him because goddammit I couldn't deal with another single fucking person telling me they were "sorry for my loss". But he didn't say that, he went outside with me, and he told me that grief is like a stone in your pocket. My stone felt like a boulder. Like I was weighed down by something so incredibly heavy. The crushing weight of losing my Dad was -- well, I didn't even want to get out of bed in the mornings. I didn't want to do anything it was so heavy. But this man told me, the um, the stone... _ the grief,   _ it won't ever go away. It won't ever leave your pocket, you won't ever be able to put it down or stop carrying it around with you but _ you _ will get stronger. And each day, as you get a little bit stronger, the stone becomes easier to carry, easier to walk around with. Does that make sense? The weight doesn't go away, but it does get easier to carry."

Adam sucks in a breath, and ducks his head when Ronan finishes speaking, the silence electric between them. "I --" he gets out, but it's choked. "Thank you," he says, looking to see Ronan's own blue eyes shining slightly and a sad, knowing smile on his face. 

"Does that help?" Ronan asked, "I know it's fucking awful to talk about people you've lost, that's why I haven't asked about Persephone, but...you know, I'm always here if you want or need to talk about her. About anything. I'm always, always here. And you're always, always getting stronger, remember that. And we can always carry things together if it gets too much." he says, and presses a soft kiss to Adam's cheek.


End file.
